I get asked quite a lot why my links don't open in new windows, and could I please add target="_blank" (or target="new" - which is incorrect) to them? The answer to that is no. I have never used target="_blank" on my site, except when I used popup windows (ewww, I know). And even then I wasn't happy about doing it. Especially now, when I validate to doctypes that don't support the target attribute.

Ok, I do have my Firefox settings set to ignore target="_blank", but why should I have to change my settings because of your site? I don't like being told how I'm going to go to a link. I want to choose for myself whether I am going to open a new window, a new tab, a new browser, or reuse the same page. I want links to follow what I've told my browser I want to happen. Usually, I reuse the same page. However, I never ever have more than one browser window open, and that is how I want it to stay, thank you very much. I can't stand cluttered desktops/taskbars where I don't know which window contains what. At least with tabs I can rename them and order them and whatever else (Firefox extensions FTW!1!).

This behaviour stems from the times of IE6 and other non-tabbed browsers, however is still being used today - people don't want visitors leaving their sites, so they force another browser window to open. On my old computer this was a nightmare - it couldn't cope with more than one instance of IE and opening another (by choice or otherwise) resulted in the whole thing crashing. Likewise, my current computer is getting slower and more dodgy every day, and opening an instance of Firefox/IE/anything takes it quite a while (yes, I have defragmented/taken off spyware/viruses/etc. It's just getting old). That's another reason I only have one FF window open, actually, heh. To those people (who don't want visitors leaving their sites) I say this: if your site is worth visiting, people will go back to it. You don't have to force them to stay on your site. In most cases, they will end up closing your site's window anyway.

So my point (I do have one, honest): please don't use target="_blank". It's not only inaccessible, but it's a nuisance to those of us such as myself (and it's not just me) who dislike our default settings being overridden. Let the user choose how to open links. Like I said, if your site is really worth staying on, people will stay on it. There is no need to force them to do so.

I've been working on this all weekend. I have pretty much completely revamped the site - I've got rid of all the old sections and got it ready for being just a blog with some photography. :)

This layout is very buggy in IE6 (there's a surprise) but it should look ok in everything else, including IE7.

Oh yes, and the old themes are gone, because they sucked. You must now have this one or nothing else :P

Let me know if you spot any problems.

That's right, new theme. I couldn't sleep last night so I spent most of my time making this, after fighting another potential design for the best part of a month. This is pretty generic for me, and I wanted to get into fluid layouts without nasty wrapping going on when the font size is increased... But alas, it was not to be. You'd think, since I make these sorts of layouts all the time (see the last 6 themes - they're all pretty much the same), that I would be able to churn them out in about 5 minutes, wouldn't you? Wrong, it took me almost 6 hours just to tweak everything and get it right. That said, the tabs are wonky in Firefox, hacked together in IE and I didn't realise they were overlapping the sidebar, so I had to move it down a little so that would no longer happen (yes, that's why that ugly white gap is there). The tabs and the titling all wrap in a really nasty way if you increase the font size, the layout isn't fluid, blah blah blah. Must get out of uncreative rut.

The photo is my own, from a day trip I went on recently. I'm really rather proud of it :D

My final year of University starts soon. I'm not entirely sure how soon since I haven't been given many details (I've got a form that says "pay your fees on [date] or else" but that's it...), but I sort of can't wait. I am so bored here at home with nothing to do. I'm sure I will hate it the moment it starts (ARGH ONLY 6 MONTHS TO DO THE DISSERTATION! ARGH ARGH ARGH *Panic*) but at the moment I hate being bored so who knows.